


Blood and Sulfur

by doctorate_in_realology



Series: Overwatch One-Offs [6]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Action, Angst, Blood, Evil plots, F/F, Fights, Interrogation, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Talon Lena "Tracer" Oxton, Technobabble, Technology, Violence, Widowmaker is going Jason Bourne status
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-28
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-10-12 01:22:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10478883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorate_in_realology/pseuds/doctorate_in_realology
Summary: Tracer has been kidnapped. Her fate has taken as dire a turn as Widowmaker's once did, who frees herself of Talon's fetters and vows to burn them to the ground.





	1. Omen

**Author's Note:**

> Listen man writing Widowmaker as like a more violent Jason Bourne just really gels with me
> 
> I don't actually know how far I'm gonna take this because I sorta wrote this on a whim but hey, we'll see. Seeing as I still need to work on Oxton Airborne, I might throw this on the backburner and pick it back up later. For the time being this'll be a one-off, but for right now I just needed some self-indulgent violence.
> 
> Should I see a psychiatrist? I'm gonna go see a psychiatrist. K hope u like bye

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Widowmaker tracks a Talon negotiation party to an industrial factory and systematically eliminates them, leaving only the commanding officer alive. A commanding officer with information pertinent to his organizations movements, and a certain Overwatch Agent-turned-Talon Commando...

The window burst apart, glimmering shards cascading against the factory floor. A bullet rent flesh and bone, blood spurting across the concrete before being fallen upon by its host, dead before he hit the floor.

“What the hell was that?!”

“Sniper, sniper, get down!”

The men dove to ill-fated safety. Another bullet pinged off the head of a bandsaw, into the skull of a mercenary. He slumped to the floor, the forklift behind which he’d hidden boasting a crimson streak.

“Where is he?!” the Major barked.

“I can’t even hear the—”

The soldier’s jaw split before he could finish his reply, unhinged by another shot with a revolting _snap_.

The Major recoiled, trembling behind his cover. He felt his arm splattered by something. His instinctive thought was water, though he knew better than to think it was something so innocuous. Whipping his head to the right, he found that the Corporal next to him had his throat torn open by gunfire. A terminal gurgle, followed by a wet thud.

The Major’s head shrunk deeper into his shoulders. He turned again to find the Russian delegates with whom he’d been negotiating, along with their security escort, dropping like stones.

A chorus of echoing cries and a ballistic accompaniment later, Major Bowden was the only living man in the cavernous room, his laboured, mortified breathing its only tone.

He shot frantic glances to the numerous lifeless men splayed out across the factory floor. Who had attacked them? How was he going to get away?

The freight truck in the receiving dock. That was his closest, only shot.

Taking exceedingly deliberate care not to expose even a centimetre of himself to his assailant, he poised to dart out across the room behind his concealment.

He steadied himself, steeled himself for the harrowing gauntlet he was about to fly through. He counted down.

_Three…_

_Two…_

_One…_

_…Go._

He flew from his shelter and across the room, leaping over fallen bodies and weaving between industrial machinery. He hoped, prayed, desperately prayed to a god he didn’t believe in that the sniper would miss, would hesitate—

Would not fire a bullet through a sheet of aluminum, glance it off the floor, and slice his shin right through the middle.

He fell to the concrete floor with a cry, crashing the side of his head against it.

His vision went black in an instant.

 

*******

“Get up.”

Bowden dragged his temple across the cold floor, slowly, and barely conscious enough to hear the order being levied upon him.

 _“Get up,”_ the voice repeated.

It was a woman’s voice. Cold. Authoritative. Intimidating. If it wasn’t so thick, it might have been harder for Bowden to determine in his current state that the voice spoke with a French accent.

A realization that elicited fear. Terror, greater than he ever knew.

Consciousness returned to him in a wave, all at once, and he shot his gaze up to find his attacker standing over him. Harsh, vengeful, hateful saffron eyes glared down at him, the only light in the room save for the seven red motes hanging over them. Hanging over those vexing, horrifying eyes.

How she must have _loved_ watching fear take him over. How she must have _relished_ watching him squirm.

“W-Widowmaker?” he stuttered, the name dribbling pathetically beyond his quivering lips.

Amélie planted her foot on his leg, rendered vestigial by her marksmanship, and shifted all her weight onto her heel. He howled in agony, his cries bordering on deafening.

 _“Stop!”_ he whimpered.

“What is Talon doing here meeting with scientists from Volskaya Industries?” she demanded, calmly and coolly amidst an undercurrent of contempt.

“What?!”

“What do you mean, ‘what?’ I _saw_ them, you _ape_. See, there they are,” she said, gesturing to their corpses. “Right over there, lying in puddles of their own spit and blood.”

Leaning in closer, her face twisted in frustration.

“So I will ask you again…”

She dug her heel against his split shinbone, inflicting torturous pain.

“What is Talon doing here?”

“ _Argh, ahh!_ We were making a deal!”

“For what?”

“Files! About the Svyatogors!”

“Why?”

He panted, hissing through clenched teeth. His shoulders brushed against the ground with every breath, his face marred by anger and fear.

Amélie didn’t appreciate the hesitation.

She grabbed a handful of his collar and hoisted him from the floor, dragging him across the factory towards the assembly line conveyor belt. She slammed him head-first into the belt, forcing his skull into the coarse, unmoving strip.

He shifted onto his right leg, the only one in working condition, standing awkwardly beneath her ire. He tried to push away from the machine but she allowed him no such comfort.

He heard a high-pitched whirring in his periphery. His eyes danced frenetically in search of the source. Upon finding it, his face paled and his mouth fell agape.

Amélie was wielding a belt sander, and held it but scant inches from the side of his head. His frightened screams drowned out the mechanical shrieking.

“ _I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you!”_

She flicked the sander’s switch off.

“I’m listening.”

“Talon wants to embed a software worm in the Svyatogor neural hub. It’ll replicate and infect the Svyatogors one-by-one until it corrupts the entire network.”

“What for? To turn the mechs against Volskaya?”

“Yes,” he grunted, resisting her hold on him to no avail. “Talon cripples Volskaya Industries, devastates Russia, then blackmails Katya Volskaya—the founder—”

“I know who she is,” Amélie interjected. “I tried to kill her.”

“Funny how things work out, isn’t it?” he laughed nervously.

“My sides are positively splitting,” she said, deadpan.

A Talon-controlled Volskaya industries spelled disaster, and that was putting it in a very mild sense. They’d have carte blanche over some of the most powerful weapons in the world, with strings guiding Katya Volskaya’s every move.

“They have Sombra spearheading this, I imagine?” Amélie continued, unrelenting in her forcefulness.

Bowden nodded against the conveyor belt, beneath the heel of the palm that dug into the base of his head.

“She’s creating the program, directing the team, everything. She says jump, Talon’s techies ask how high.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

The belt sander spurred to life again. Amélie felt Bowden try to pull away from it beneath her grip. Again, she allowed him no such comfort.

“Dubai!” he cried in obedience. “Dubai, she’s in Dubai! At our main tech lab!”

“Alright,” Amélie said, turning off the sander once again as she was seemingly pleased with the answer. “Now, onto more pressing matters… where is _she?”_

“W-what? Who?”

Amélie flicked the sander back on and jammed it against the side of Bowden’s head without hesitation. He screamed and writhed in her hold as she gnashed the ear from his head. Blood rained and spewed across the floor, whipped about in crimson torrents. She tossed the bloodstained workshop tool to the floor and slammed his skull against the conveyor again.

“The Overwatch agent— _where is she?”_

“ _You sanded my ear off, you crazy fucking psychopath whore!”_ he screeched.

“Either you give me answers or your fingernails,” she went on, ignoring the superfluous statement of the obvious. “Make your choice, Major.”

He growled in agonized fury. “She’s in Turkey right now, but she’ll be long gone before you show up. You can’t help her, Widowmaker. She’s _ours_ now.”

If Bowden ever said he’d been terrified by a laugh before then, he would be lying.

“So was I,” Amélie whispered into what remained of his ear, “yet here I am, killing you off like flies and sanding off officers’ body parts. Funny how things work out, isn’t it?

“Here’s what you are, Major,” she continued. “You are a declaration of war. They’ll know it was me, when they find your broken, lifeless body, lying in here in a pool of its own blood and bile among the remains of your friends. They’ll know it was me, and they’ll know that I’m coming for them. I’m coming for _every, single, one of them._ When they find you, they will know that I’m going to bring the entire loathsome, vile, festering organization down on their heads. You are a foreshadowing, Bowden. You are a _message._ ”

With that, she dropped him against the floor, unslung the rifle from her back, and fired. The bullet pierced his skull, shards of bone clattering against the concrete. As did the second, and third. So too did the fourth.

She exited the factory, torrential rain washing the blood from her hands and feet and face. This factory, this massacre—it was the first step in a long, bloody, poetic crusade.

Talon was going to _burn_ for all that they had done _,_ and Amélie would revel in scattering the ashes.


	2. A City of Smoke and Mirrors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Amélie returns to the Overwatch base of operations as unannounced as she had left it; Amélie travels to Dubai, looking for answers. More precisely, some old acquaintances that can provide them...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cat's outta the bag folks, let's get this terrible party started

“Where the _hell_ have you been?!”

Amélie shouldered through the congregation, ignoring the question that all but McCree had asked in silence.

“You were gone for a _month,_ we were worried sick about you! Y’can’t just haul off and disappear like that without telling us what’s goin’ on! Leave a damn note, at least!”

“Where I go is nobody’s business but my own,” she said as she descended the stairs of the Eichenwalde pub-turned-base of operations to her quarters. She stifled a sigh as she heard inquisitive steps following closely behind her.

“We want to help you, Amélie,” said Angela. “You’ve been very aloof lately. More than usual.”

“None of you stopped to think there was a reason for that?”

Angela stopped and stammered for a moment. She followed Amélie further, Jesse behind her and Fareeha behind him. Amélie pushed open the door to her room and started gathering her things, flying about with purpose.

“Where are you going?” Angela asked, ignoring the frankly worrying number of weapons that had been surreptitiously stowed away. Amélie pulled a karambit out from beneath her mattress and shoved it into the sheath she’d strapped to her leg, making for the door.

“Out.”

“Amélie.”

She walked through them again, intent on dodging every question.

“This is about Lena, isn’t it?”

Except for that one.

Amélie stopped dead in her tracks. Her gaze affixed to the far wall of the main room that she found herself in once again. She shrugged the strap of the duffel bag more securely onto her shoulder, and breathed a silent sigh.

“Of course it’s about Lena.”

The room was quiet before. How it became quieter was unknown.

Amélie knew what Angela was about to say even before she said it. “You can’t—”

“Yes I can,” Amélie said, turning and shrugging. She spoke with such conviction that her tone bordered on nonchalance.

“It’s suicide, Amélie,” Fareeha spoke up. “Taking on Talon all by yourself is a death sentence. Even for you.”

Winston took a step forward from the crowd to her left. “We all want her back,” he began, melancholy as thick as tar. “More than anything. But there is a difference between decisiveness and recklessness. Now is not the time for a war.”

“Then don’t fight in it. I’m not asking you to.”

Winston’s face twisted in concern and frustration. “Amélie, please, we want to help you, but now is not the time _._ ”

She was already at the exit by the time Winston finished. She turned to address them, with fire in her saffron eyes. _“I have done my waiting.”_

She opened the door without another word, and left.

Was her need for solitude born of uncharacteristic altruism? Maybe she really didn’t want anyone else to be endangered, swept up in the crimson tides of her crusade. Perhaps she wanted to bear her bloody cross alone because she didn’t want to burden others with it.

Nonsense. Self-righteous drivel. There was no humanitarianism in her decision, no selflessness. This was not an act of contrition, or an obligation she had taken upon herself like so many arrogant, self-proclaimed bleeding hearts were so wont to tell everyone about.

The thought of Talon’s blood being on anyone’s hands but her own made her enraged. Amélie had never felt such greed, such furious avarice before.

She wanted to do it alone because she was angry.

 

*******

Spires of glass surrounded Amélie as she threaded between the comers and goers of the bustling Dubai streets. Light of the city’s notorious nightlife gleamed off the crystalline towers, a spectrum of cool colours cascading overhead. The diamond-like skyscrapers, the blaring nightclubs, the pretentious cars and their far more pretentious owners certainly lent more than enough credence to the city’s age-old moniker—a billionaire’s playground, indeed.

Amélie had been here before. A city of smoke and mirrors. Nothing more.

Oncoming passersby gave her a wide berth. Most had adorned themselves with the gaudy accoutrements typical of nocturnal partygoers. Needless to say, being that she was clad head-to-hips in military-grade leather, with a hood and sunglasses disguising her from any prying eyes and combat boots peering out from beneath denim cuffs, Amélie was quick to repel attention as swiftly as she drew it.

She ducked through the doors of a nearby apartment building, having finally found an egress in the writhing crowd. The luxury marble floors and pillars of hardlight made for an ostentatious display, little different from her previous surroundings in that regard. She strode quickly for the elevator.

The doors were about to seal when she forced her hand through the gap and pried them back open, pulling herself into the elevator and pressing her thumb to the button denoting the highest floor. She stood alongside the elevator’s only other occupant, sparing him not a glance.

She noticed in her periphery that he was sizing her up, glancing her up and down. As evidenced by the trajectory of his eyes and the shit-eating grin on his poorly-shaven face, he noticed neither the hue of her skin nor the harshness of her countenance, but was far more interested in the curve of her ass.

The doors opened, marking his stop, but he reached across in front of Amélie to the panel of buttons and pressed his finger to three more.

“I think I can spare the time,” he said, wearing the same ridiculous smile as before.

Amélie felt the compulsion to sigh and roll her eyes, but betrayed nothing. She shifted her weight to one foot in order to lean away, and to avoid the stench of alcohol that weighed heavily on the man’s breath, albeit in vain.

“Can I get your name?” he asked, extending a hand.

“Fuck off.”

He was undeterred. “First, why don’t we—”

The doors parted. Before another slurred word could dribble past his lips, Amélie yanked him by the collar and tossed him onto the floor of the hallway beyond, closing the doors in his face as he stumbled back to his feet.

She reached the roof in short order—but not before stopping at two other floors prior, thanks to the Casanova that was likely laying in a puddle of his own vomit a few floors down by now—and unslung the single-strap backpack from her shoulder. From it, she pulled a monocular, and shed her hood and glasses as she approached the roof’s edge.

The streets slithered far below, alive with commotion. If Amélie’s informant—unwilling though he was—was to be trusted, then her target should be arriving at any moment. She adjusted the focus of her monocular, scanning the crowd to see if he had already shown up.

Purple light spilled out across the steps in front of the open nightclub doors, and onto the sidewalk. All manner of people came and went. Someone was having an argument with one of the bouncers, maybe trying to convince him that she was guest-listed in a futile attempt to gain free entry. Several others filed into a cab. Where was the needle hiding in this obnoxious haystack?

Amélie quickly got her answer, when a limousine pulled up to the curb. The driver stepped out and opened the passenger cabin door—

—and out stepped the needle.

“Hello, Maximilien,” she whispered.

That devious Omnic was certainly doing well for himself. He had money, he had connections, he had expertise—all he’d needed was a window of opportunity, and Akande certainly saw to that when he threw Talon’s last chief financier off a six-story balcony in Venice.

Maximilien knew how to play his cards. Before long, he had been making more money for Talon than their last three financiers combined.

They needed him. That meant that Amélie needed him.

She scooped up her things and made for the fire escape, flying down it with haste. She reached the bottom catwalk and vaulted over the edge, twirling and latching onto the railing with her grappling hook as she fell. She swung in a massive arc, rolled as she reached the alley floor, and strolled out onto the street.

Directly across from her was the nightclub in which Maximilien was waiting. The front door was a no-go—couldn’t risk spooking him, and the neckless heaps masquerading as bouncers wouldn’t very well let her waltz right in.

The roof it was, then. She circled the building and reached the top with ease, too quickly for anyone to have seen her. She retrieved her gear from her sling, stowed her things in the mouth of an air vent, and kicked the rooftop access door open.

Showtime, Max.

 

*******

“My current clients are paying me handsomely enough, I assure you.”

“I’m sure they are,” Maximilien said with a shrug. “But we can pay more. Much more, and ensure your safety in the war to come.”

“What war might that be?”

“A dangerous question, Vasily. We’re here to talk services, remember.”

Vasily’s unremarkable features twisted in distaste, made even less legible by the room’s dim blue light. They were the room’s only occupants, save for the bodyguard standing sentinel by the door.

“Not a fan of need-to-know bases?” Maximilien asked, red-backlit eyes widening slightly. “You’re an arms dealer—I should think them to be your primary avenue of communication.”

“Not when _I’m_ the one that needs to know,” Vasily growled.

“You’re cleverer than you look, then. Clever men like you and I stand to gain quite substantially from partnership. What do you say?” He extended his composite metal hand. “My organization makes powerful friends.”

Vasily glanced reluctantly at the hand held out to him. To shake it meant to consort with people that made his current clientele—human traffickers, paramilitaries and unscrupulous PMCs being few among them—look like frail, frightened children.

In other words, to shake it meant to become _disgustingly_ rich.

He leaned forward in his chair, hand held out, and—

Three mechanical coughs, followed by three thuds, sounded from beyond the door.

“What was that?” Maximilien asked, ordering his bodyguard to investigate.

The hulk drew a firearm from his coat pocket with exaggerated slowness, and reached for the doorknob all the same. He twisted it in his palm, awaited the telltale _clack,_ and whipped the door open, gun at the ready.

“What is it?” Maximilien asked again.

The bodyguard turned. “Everyone’s dead—”

A black figure dropped to the floor beyond the door. The bodyguard threw his arm out to aim his weapon at it, to no avail. The figure caught him by the wrist and plunged a curved blade into the side of his neck, stifling his words with wet gurgles. The blade burst from his throat, and he fell to the floor amidst a crimson splatter.

Seven glowing red dots hung in the darkness. The room’s roaming blue light illuminated the assassin but briefly.

“Lacroix,” Maximilien greeted with stillness, trying vainly to veil his fear behind a complacent tone.

“Maximilien.” She looked to Vasily, then back to him. “I’m sorry, am I interrupting something?”

“Somewhat.”

“How indecorous of me.” She leaned against the wall next to the door with crossed arms, kicking the entrance closed. “By all means, continue.”

The two negotiators glanced to one another from the corners of their eyes, and back to her. She urged them to continue with a waving of her hand. They slid back into their seats uneasily. “We have a deal then?”

Vasily nodded, extending his hand once again, albeit with far more uncertainty than last time. They shook.

“There,” Amélie spoke up. “All signed and sealed. Happy with the terms, Vasily?”

Vasily turned to her in a flash. “How do you know who I am?”

“She knew enough to find me, didn’t she?” Maximilien pointed out. Vasily whipped back to him.

“One of the most notorious arms dealers of the Russian underworld,” Amélie said, pushing off the wall with her shoulders and strolling slowly towards the centre of the room, where her targets sat in anticipation. “There was quite a dustup a few years ago when it was discovered that the Azerbaijani police forces were implicated in an illicit weapons deal. Your handiwork, if I recall correctly.”

Vasily slunk back into his seat like a deflating balloon. He shot a look of befuddlement at Maximilien. “You know this woman?”

“We’re friends from work,” she said, feigning a smile.

She pushed the table out from between them with her foot and sat on the edge, with Maximilen to her left and Vasily to her right, and the door directly downwind, should anyone in the club outside become too curious for their own good.

“Well, now that a deal has been struck, tell me—what’d you agree to?”

The two men shared yet another anxious glance, before Maximilien spoke up. “Vasily has agreed to provide us with his services. In exchange, Talon is to grant him asylum…” He paused, searching for something vague enough. “…When the time comes.”

“Ah, you mean once Talon commandeers Volskaya Industries’s entire robotics division and cripples the country with war?” There was great fun to be had in the looks of shock painted on the two other faces in the room. “Don’t try and tiptoe around your scheme with me, Maximilien. I know full well what you intend to do.”

“ _That’s_ your plan?!” Vasily shot to his feet. “You try and strike a deal with me when you plan to plunge my home into war?! Fuck you, and _fuck_ your money, Omnic!”

“You’re no patriot,” Amélie spat, “All you care about is money, so stop trying to contrive a reason to leave and shut your mouth.”

Vasily looked lividly at the other two, and after a moment’s consideration fell back into his chair.

“I urge you to reconsider your partnership, Max,” Amélie went on. “I believe I have something far better to offer.”

“I find that hard to believe,” Maximilien said, eyeing her up and down as if to prepare himself for the reaching of a weapon. Like he could react in time to defend himself, anyway.

“You’re smart to, I’ll concede to that. But it’s true. All you need to do is make some deliberately poor investments here, reallocate some funds there, and amnesty is yours.”

“Amnesty?”

Amélie nodded. “I’ll look the other way. You’ll be free to pursue whatever ventures you wish, and I won’t kill you.”

Maximilien’s eyes narrowed, before widening again in realization. “Ahh, on the warpath, are we? You think you can topple Talon?”

“You don’t?”

“You’re good at killing, Lacroix, certainly, but even you have your limits. So, no, I don’t.”

Amélie raised an eyebrow and upturned her lips in a devilish smirk. “You’re a smart man, Max. A financial virtuoso like no other. But you’re a dreadful liar.”

If he were able to, Maximilien would be sweating bullets.

“This is ridiculous,” Vasily shouted. “You honestly believe that you can bring down Talon? Alone? Good at killing, maybe, but that is where your intellect ends.”

Amélie shot him an icy, silencing glare. She turned back to Maximilien, who had not moved an inch out of place. Only his eyes danced, danced between them. In one seat, a merchant; in the other, a kingslayer. She quirked an eyebrow that asked if they had an arrangement.

Maximilien, after a silence, gave an acquiescent sigh. “What would you have me do?”

Vasily shot up in his seat. “You’re not _really_ going to agree to this?”

Amélie casually drew a pistol from a holster at the small of her back and leveled it at the arms dealer’s head, and pulled the trigger. A flash of white-yellow light illuminated the room for a split second before being plunged back into a deep blue. The crack of gunfire was quelled instantly by the soundproof walls. Vasily lurched back in an instant and crashed against the back of his chair, toppling it to the floor.

Barrel still oozing vapour, she turned to see Maximilien’s hands digging into the fabric armrests, his gaze affixed to Vasily’s body.

“Now that _that’s_ taken care of,” she began, “I’ll let you know what I need you to do later. For now, it is enough to know that I have your support. One more thing, however…”

Amélie pulled the table directly in front of Maximilien. She sat perched on its edge just as before, but leaned closer, enough that the Omnic’s faceplate began to accumulate fog from her breath.

“I want Sombra.”


End file.
